At the Royal Rumble, The Rock Needs To Win the WWE Championship

Okay, the Royal Rumble is tonight.  There are a few thoughts that I have leading into the PPV tonight.  One is that The Rock vs CM Punk should be the match to close the show.  But of course,  the big question that everyone else is wondering about is whether or not The Rock is going to beat CM Punk and win the belt.  I don’t think it’s a matter of whether or not The Rock should win. It’s a matter of The Rock HAS to win tonight.

Yeah, I know.  I know CM Punk has been champion for over 400 days and climbing.  It’s an accomplishment to say the least, but the fact is that having a champion hold a belt for so long is one thing,  but keeping people entertained during his title reign is another.  No champion is any good at that without competition.  Looking back at Punk’s reign as champion, he hasn’t had a whole of that going around.  He beat Alberto Del Rio to win the belt. He defended it against Del Rio again and The Miz the next month.  Then he Dolph Ziggler at the Royal Rumble and a bunch of filler guys for the Elimination Chamber before taking on Chris Jericho in back to back months, then Daniel Bryan and then Daniel Bryan and Kane and then John Cena and Big Show before facing John Cena again and then Ryback before facing against Cena and Ryback and then Ryback again on Raw.   So if you look at it, in that 400+ days that CM Punk has been WWE Champion, he’s only defended the belt against 9 guys with a good chunk of them he faced off against in multiple months.

The other problem with Punk’s reign as champion and why The Rock must win tonight is the fact that his countdown that he keeps doing is getting old.  In fact, it’s getting rather stale and as pointed out in the last article,  you keep going with this for so long, you’re gonna get to the point that when the guy does lose the belt, what do you do with him? Besides, the way that the WWE is with the Part-Time guys, are they really gonna have The Rock lose?  Yeah I know that they had Brock Lesnar lose in his match with John Cena but that’s different.  The Rock didn’t leave the WWE high and dry like Lesnar did and unlike Brock Lesnar, The Rock actually does love the business which is the least I can say for Brock.

I know that CM Punk has talent and can find a way to manage without the title and he did give us one whole year without John Cena winning the gold like her normally does.  But every champion loses the belt at some point.  CM Punk is no different because as many times as either Hulk Hogan or John Cena held a world title, they eventually had to drop it to somebody else.  CM Punk losing the belt tonight is more salvageable than if The Rock were to lose tonight.  If The Rock actually loses tonight, then what do you do with him from there? If he’s supposed to be sticking around at least until after Wrestlemania, then what are you going to do with him for all the time leading up to the PPV?  Yeah, you could have The Rock win at some point between now and Mania, but it’s little thing called Simplicity.   Don’t complicate things WWE and just keep them simple.  Do the right thing and actually let The Rock win the match because this is a match that could very easily be a classic match and definitely be in the Top 5 of the best WWE matches of 2013.  Don’t risk tarnishing that by having a screw-job finish or some other means that would leave CM Punk still to bore the hell out of the rest of us with his “Counting Down to Who Gives a Rat’s Ass How Long You’ve Been Champion For.”

 

CM Punk: Over 400 days as Champion, and yet still Nothing

So, CM Punk battles The Rock on Sunday.  His promo while good was more of the same. Best in the World this. Best in the World that. And rehashing his lines from his promo where he said the people don’t matter.  The interesting part, especially after The Shield attacked The Rock was that Vince, who botched his line, said that if The Shield interfere in Punk’s match, CM Punk will be stripped of the WWE Championship.  The part that made me laugh was when Punk said the belt was prestigious again since he’s held it.

WRONG!!!!!!!

That belt has not been prestigious in years and CM Punk sure as hell hasn’t helped it any by holding onto the belt for over a year.  Yeah 428 or whatever number days as champion. Impressive but there’s one slight problem and that is what are you gonna be saying when you lose the belt? Are you still going to call yourself the Best in the World? It didn’t really work for Chris Jericho. Because the fact is that once Punk loses that belt and once he’s the FORMER Champion, those 428 days are gonna mean precisely dick.

Chris Jericho was the first undisputed champion, but as the years went on, it became nothing more than just a little blip on the screen, nothing more than a pebble falling to the ocean and making zero impact.  The biggest problem with CM Punk’s character right now is that without the belt, without his championship reign, his character is useless.  It’s about as useless as a jar of Slim Fast to Vickie Guerrero.  As much time and energy I guess as WWE has put into CM Punk, they might have put Punk himself in jeopardy.  The Miz was in the main event at Wrestlemania two years ago. Look at him now, he’s trying to rebuild himself but still, he’s nowhere close to where he was years ago.  Is this what we’re going to have to expect with CM Punk?  Is the guy that keeps calling himself the Best in The World going to be reduced to where the only thing he’s best in the world at is being an after-thought.

 

 

Man-Jaw quits, New Champion Crowned, Divas Division in Jeopardy

Okay.  So Eve “Man-Jaw” Torres has now quit the WWE. This is following when Kaitlyn, the future Mrs Shark, won the Divas Title from Eve.  Reportedly Eve has wanted to leave for a while now since she’s engaged to one of the Gracies of UFC/MMA fame and seems to be pretty committed to a self-defense program for women.  I’m not exactly missing Eve simply because all that time spent with graces and you still could only master two moves in the ring. You’re like the female equivalent of John Cena.

I can’t help but wonder about something here.  Stacy Keibler goes on Dancing with the Stars and is released.  Maria goes on The Apprentice and is released.  Ashley goes on Survivor, appears for a little bit and is released. Torrie Wilson goes on I’m A Celebrity, Get me… oh who gives a rat’s ass and is gone. Or maybe after her time in the WWE, who can tell?  Eve goes on some military reality show that I didn’t care enough about to even know it’s name and has now quit.  What is with reality TV shows being the preverbal bullet for WWE Divas?  At least Maria found her way back in wrestling by going to Ring of Honor and is now engaged to Mike Bennett.  Stacy Keibler is or at least was dating one of the biggest actors in Hollywood so you can’t say she’s having it rough.

The casualty here in all this unfortunately is the Divas Division.  The only veteran Diva you have right now is Layla and she’s barely seen these days and Natalya is too busy hanging around with Team WTF that is herself, Khali and Hornswoggle.  And before you say I forgot about Tamina Snuka or Rosa Mendes or Alicia Fox, no I didn’t.  You barely see either of them doing anything.   To those that are saying that this is gonna hurt the Divas division now that Eve is gone, it’s been hurting.  It’s been hurting since Mickie James left, Maryse left,  Melina, The Bellas, Kelly Kelly and especially Beth Phoenix.  Top that off with Kharma being a complete bust due to her getting pregnant, having the miscarriage, and being a pain in the ass reportedly in the developmental territories. Let’s hope to hell that we start seeing some new faces coming out of NXT and any other developmental territories because otherwise, everybody start getting shovels so we cant start planning a funeral.